Guatemala Traveling Part 1

Okay, so three of my friends came from the U.S. to visit me, two of them stayed for one week and the third stayed two weeks and just left a couple hours ago. This is what we did:

Day 1: Explored Antigua. The Jade Museum, some churches, a ruined church, the market, parks










Day 2: Visited my farthest away school. Got up at 5am, missed the bus we were supposed to catch at 6, waited until 7, got to Comalapa on time to get picked up by my principal in his pickup. Rode in the pickup for 45 minutes on a dirt road to the school. The four of us taught healthy schools songs to all the kids and teachers in the school. We played a little soccer, but then it started pouring and we had to stop. We got home about 2pm, ate lunch and then we all fell asleep on the floor at my partner's apartment. That night we made cookies which we shared with my host family.

Day 3: I went to school in town and left them to sleep. After school we packed up and took a bus toward the lake. We were supposed to go to our hotel on Lake Atitlan, but there was a landslide on one of the roads that we were supposed to use, and we had to go back to the previous town, Solola, and find a place to stay. We ended up getting completely soaked from running around in the rain looking for a hotel with room, and ended up eventually finding one, but the guy charged us an outrageous price because he knew that we didn't have anywhere else to go. The day was actually kind of fun to look back on because we were walking around in rivers of rain water and eventually did find a place, and then we spent the evening with one of my friends from my training group. He told us that if it wasn't foggy and gross we could easily see the lake from where we were, but we weren't able to that whole day. That night, right as we got to our hotel, the sky cleared enough that we could see the reflection of the moon and stars off the lake.

Day 4: We made it down to the lake because they had cleaned up the road enough for us to pass. We got into the town of Panajachel and went looking for the boat to take us to our hotel. The guys at the dock that we found spent a lot of effort trying to convince us that we couldn't go to our hotel without paying extra because there weren't many tourists, and we had to pull out all the bargaining techniques in our arsenal to get them to give us the normal, posted rate. Then, while we were waiting for the boat to leave a woman came up to try to sell us choco-bananas (frozen bananas dipped in chocolate). She initially told me that they cost Q5 and I literally just laughed in her face. They normally cost Q1 or less, and after all the bargaining we had just done I wasn't in the mood. Fortunately, though, the laughing-in-their-face bargaining technique was very effective and she immediately said Q1, so I bought one (it was actually a chocolate covered frozen watermelon, but close enough). Then we went to our hotel, Iguana Perdida, which was absolutely beautiful. It was right on the lake, and isolated from big towns. We went hiking, but couldn't find the trail, so ended up clambering around on a dried up river bed for a while before heading back when it started to rain. Then we walked up to a little village that was above our hotel. We ate a delicious dinner that night at the hotel, and I played a travel version of Settlers of Catan with some Canadians who were staying there. This was the first of many interactions that we had with other travelers over the next weeks.

Day 5: We ate breakfast at the hotel and then headed back East. We took a boat from the hotel to Panajachel, a camionetta from Pana to Solola, another from Solola to Los Encuentros, then another to Tecpan. From there we caught a taxi that took us to the Mayan ruins at Iximche. We wandered the ruins for an hour or so and then it started pouring. The cab picked us back up, took us to the main road where we took another camionetta back to my site, grabbed our stuff (they had left a lot of their luggage at my house) and caught another camionetta to San Lucas. In San Lucas we had some typical Guatemalan snack foods (chuchitos, tostadas with frijoles/guacamole/salsa, atol de elote, and a rellenito de platano) and then caught another camionetta to Antigua. We settled into our hotel and then asked the night-watchman guy about places to eat dinner for cheap, and he sent us to a tienda that has a comedor in the back. If I haven't mentioned this before, a comedor is like a restaurant, but they only have 3 or 4 options of foods each day, which they prepare a little in advance. I really enjoyed it because it was very inexpensive for Antigua, and it was very Guatemalan (also surprising to find in Antigua...). It was one of my friends' birthday, so we went to a dance place to try to dance salsa, but they didn't play any salsa while we were inside. Of course I don't know how to dance salsa, so if they HAD played the music, I'm not sure how much better it actually would have been.

Day 6: We got up at 5:30 to catch a tour van to take us to the volcano Pacaya. It was cloudy again, as it had been every day of their visit. We started the hike with our guide, and once again it was very touristy. The hike was fairly unimpressive until we were 80% of the way up. We rounded a bend, and there in front of us was the top of the mountain, steaming from the lava. The rocks there are all black and jagged and difficult to pick up. We followed our guide and clambered over a semi-path that they had picked through the rock. Pacaya erupted at the end of May of this year, and so it has changed a lot from how it was 6 months ago. The gash at the top is new, as is the valley below it. The rocks we were standing on were hot, and there were places where you could roast a marshmallow in about .8 seconds. It was breathtaking being up there, it felt like a different world. Also, the air was cold, but the ground was really warm, so it was kind of like if you were sitting in a hot bath with a cold hose being sprayed on you, but not really... While we were up there, we ran into a girl that a couple of us recognized, and it turns out that we had met in Portland and had some really close mutual friends. Pretty weird place to bump into someone you know... So we went down the mountain, and chatted with some of our fellow tourists on the ride back, meeting a British couple. When we got back we had lunch with some of my Peace Corps friends, and then went shopping in the market. The vendors did their best to rip us off, but with a bit of regatear-age we found a few things for the boys to bring back for reasonable prices.
Then we got picked up by a pickup truck and taken to our hotel, Earth Lodge, which is up on a hill overlooking a town called Jocotenango with a view of three volcanoes. We couldn't actually see that view when we got there, because it was dark, but when we woke up, we discovered that we were in a beautiful place. Our room was a two-story cabin built around a tree with a window facing the view. That night we played darts and Trivial Pursuit and just relaxed in the main lodge area of the hotel. It was a great way to end the first part of the trip. The next morning, two of them left early to take a shuttle to the airport and go home. I'll tell the story about the next week of travels in my next post.

School is ending

October 8, 2010
So...I haven't been bored. We had two tropical storms that "standfasted" me in my site, but there were things to do. First there was Quince (I think I already wrote about that). Then there was school again, and planning a visit from some of my U.S. friends (thanks again for coming, guys!). Visiting the schools renewed my enthusiasm for my job and gave me hope for next year. Granted that's because I asked the teachers loaded questions like, "Have you seen any progress since we started the project?" Since they were then obliged to come up with changes they had seen, I felt validated in the work that I have been doing. Plus some of my schools are great, and I had sort of forgotten that.

Then on a Thursday I found out that my host dad was going to leave on Saturday for the U.S. to work legally (it had been planned for a while, but there was never a specific date). So the next day I made a cake and chocolate chip cookies, and we had a goodbye dinner for him. The next morning he left, and it reminded me of my process of leaving for Peace Corps, but I think it's very different for Guatemalans because they almost never travel, and thus spend most of their lives living in the same town and often the same house, as their families (parents, children, siblings, etc.). So it was hard on everyone when he left, and I felt like an intruder into a private event, witnessing their sadness. Then I was standfasted again. I thought that it was the worst possible timing, because my friends were flying in in two days, but the next day we were released from standfast, so it was okay. What followed was a whirlwind 2-week tour of the country that I will describe in my next post.